Original upload date: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 01:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:43:44 GMT
This song and film came just a few years before the first Earth Day in 1970. Tom Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He known for the pithy, humorous songs
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that he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. His work often parodies popular song forms, such as in "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer's earlier work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor, seen in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was The Week That Was.
In the early 1970s, he retired from public performances to devote his time to teaching mathematics and music theatre. This short film of "Pollution", featuring a cartoon of a bird playing a piano at a dump, combined with real scenes of industrial excess from across America, was made in 1966 and 1967 by Astrafilms for the U.S. Communicable Disease Center (not the Environmental Protection Agency as previously reported). The first cut in 1966 featured the live recording of "Pollution" from the LP, but this version of the film was not used. It was then redone in 1967, using more drastic scenes to really drive home the message. Tom and the producers agreed that it would be better to use a studio recording of the song without the audience, so he re-recorded it for the second version. It was then distributed by the National Medical Audio-Visual Center. For more of his wonderful songs that still have meaning today, go to http://dmdb.org/lehrer/.
